Delhi as hot as Timbuktu, hotter than desert cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat

New Delhi: The Indian Meteorological Department has warned of a heatwave in the National Capital Region (NCR) and several parts of north and north-west India. Temperatures in recent days have soared well over the 40C mark and the mercury is likely to hover here for at least a few more days.

On Wednesday, the mercury was at 43C mark around noon in Delhi. This is just a day after temperatures were recorded at a two-year high of 44.2C at the Palam Observatory. Around the same time - on Wednesday, desert cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Muscat were less hot and are likely to remain so for most parts of this week. While Delhi sizzled at around 43C mark, Dubai's weather forecast for Wednesday showed a maximum of 41C and falling to 38C in the days to come, according to weather monitoring website accuweather.com. Abu Dhabi too is likely to witness maximum temperatures between 38C and 41C. Muscat in Oman fares a lot better with a maximum temperature ranging from as low as 34C to 36C for this week.

All of these are desert cities.

Interestingly, Delhi currently may well be hotter than some of the hottest places on Earth. According to UK-based The Independent, Aziziyah (Libya), Dallol (Ethiopia), Wadi Halfa (Sudan), Tirat Zvi (Israel) and Timbuktu (Mali) are some of the hottest places on Earth. At the time of filing this report, Wednesday's maximum temperature in each of these cities were or were predicted to be as follows:

Aziziyah: 39C

Dalol: 46C

Wadi Halfa: 45C

Tirat Zvi: 36C

Timbuktu: 44C

While there are several factors that influence weather patterns, going only by the reading on temperature gauges, Delhi is clearly either more hot or as hot as some of the most sizzling places on the face of the planet. Unfortunately, it is hardly the only Indian city currently witnessing soaring temperatures. At the time of filing this report, cities like Bikaner (44C), Jodhpur (44C) and Amritsar (45C) were baking as well.